Cougar Shot in Chicago

My Ligertown Flashbacks

In an article by WMAQ-TV, on the MSNBC news page today, we're told that North Chicago police officers cornered a wayward cougar in an alley up against a fence, and then shot the animal as it was attacking them.

I am guessing that this cougar is a pet because: 1. Wild cougars are not expected to be "well-fed" 2. Cougars do not like to be in flat-land like that part of Chicago. 3. I've seen this sad story before.

Back in 1995 the American public heard all kinds of butchered stories about a place in southeast Idaho called Ligertown. You were told that people named Bob and Dotty had crossbreeds of lions and tigers in rickety cages, and that these dangerous animals got loose. For a while the media was all over the Ligertown story, and the picture of one dead animal beside a small pickup truck in Bob and Dotty's yard. 19 animals were shot that day for no reason.

The Ligertown story didn't happen exactly as the media tried to get everybody to believe that it happened. To set the scene, picture a steep 6-mile hill with a highway running up the side of the hill; at the bottom, you have farm land and maybe a dozen spread-out houses. At the top of the hill, nestled into a nook, you have a tiny tourist town with a river running through it. Between these two places, you had Bob and Dotty and their animals.

The official media report has never told anybody about the night before the animals got loose, that a truck going up the highway was asking on his CB if he was really seeing a tiger or lion cross the road. I calmly answered him from my driveway at the bottom of the hill, a cheery little remark asking if he'd like me to chase it back so that he could get a picture. For that matter, I don't know if anybody except the truck and me knew that a cat was out before Ligertown was turned into a media circus. And, it didn't bother me one little bit to hear that trucker mumble that a cat was out. I just figured that the wayward bear that people were seeing near the canyon would scare the cat into going home.